Divine Plagiarism

‘Maybe redemption has stories to tell,
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell,
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where are you going to go… Salvation is here.’ - Switchfoot, Dare You to Move.

Try, fail, quit, run. A sequence I knew all too well. Find enough hope to give it a shot again, but make sure all your bases are covered as you dip a toe into the water. As the cold water stings, pull your foot back and set yourself to flight. Banish all thoughts, all desires, anything that would make you want to hope. I lived as a coward for far too long. A man afraid of his own heart. So I ran from it, hid it, buried it, tried to placate it, to make it forget, I did anything and everything to keep it tame, to keep it from hurting me. To love was to be hurt, so therefore I would love only on my terms, only when the investment was safe. I was C.S.L’ self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. Unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Jonah ran. God brought him back until he finally quit running. Moses at least gave it a shot. When he saw where God was moving, he determined to get there through his own strength. He made sure that he analyzed all the options, ran the numbers, and gave it a try. Running in exile, stripped of position and power, he finds himself a shepherd. Try, fail, quit, run. So decades later, when God shows up in a burning bush, his answer is ‘you’ve got the wrong guy.’ His answer is not borne of the modesty of a simple man, far from it. Moses was the child of the courts of Pharaoh, the adopted son of royalty. His answer is instead the petition of the burnt-out pastor. ‘Don’t make me go back there, I know how that story turns out. I failed, I get it. Why won’t you just leave me alone about it?’

‘You are strong, but you will never know how strong you are until you turn to face your fears.’ I knew she and I were very similar. I have to admit, though, that it did not occur to me as I said those words that they might be just as true for myself. Really, it was the story of the entire interaction between her and I. Try. Spend time with her, go on a few dates, express some interest. Fail. She runs. Quit. ‘Forget this, I’m going to pilot training.’ Run. Hide in my strengths. Lose myself in something I’m good at. Lose myself in my work. Months later, when I feel as if God is nudging me to contact her, my objection is Moses’: I know how this ends. Don’t make me go back there. Still, I find enough hope to dip one toe in. But diving is the act of letting go. You will fall on your face if you try to hold onto the shore as you enter the water. And I did. Over and over.

I am finding that ‘Never again’ is not often a promise that God lets you keep. So much has changed. Six months ago, I stopped running. And six months later, I am praying more beautiful prayers than I prayed even when things were simple. Six months later, I am more in love with God than I have ever been. I asked Him, six months ago, to teach me to love her the way He does, because I could not tell the difference between my love and my hatred. He answered that prayer. None of this has been through my own strength. I had to come to the point where my mind, my will, and my heart totally failed, and in that place I had to fall into His arms. There, He taught me the true nature of strength. In my weakness, He is strong. Through Him, I am strong. Stronger than I ever thought possible.

I had no idea how necessary this journey was. If He answers my prayers, I would still need to fight through hell for her. In order to do so, I must have fought through the hell in myself. Perhaps this is another way of saying ‘sanctification.’ Or perhaps this is C.S.L’s lawless and inordinate love. If God has found this love as a means of breaking me, if He brought me back here over and over until I would be broken, then along with C.S.L., I say ‘so be it.’ But maybe, just maybe, there is still some deep magic here. Maybe redemption still has stories to tell.

So, singing praise songs, New Years Eve at Urbana, I look back across the last year. I am not the same man that I was. Well, maybe I am, but in a very different way. I have become the man I always was but was always afraid to become. I can’t say all of this makes sense. But I am here now. I know that much. Sometimes, it is strange how things work out.

It is remarkably easy, I think, to forget about God’s accounting of things. If we wanted a warrior to challenge a giant, we would not choose a shepherd boy. If we meant to reshape the structures of the known world, we would have put together a committee of the best scientists, artists, lawyers, philosophers and engineers. We would certainly not have recruited a handful of barely literate fishermen and a lawyer-turned-tentmaker. God’s math is just different than ours.

In LOTR (I have to use a Tolkien analogy whenever it is relevant in the least,) a summons is sent out for the best and the brightest of the free peoples of Middle Earth. Swordsmen, wizards, and warriors set out to save the world. Yet, the one that ends up accomplishing the task the fellowship sets out to do is the least likely of all heroes, a mildly adventuresome hobbit who finds the strength to face his fears. We could learn much from Frodo. When we consider a task, we look for capability, not pliability. We want people who already have strength, and then we look for ways to bring them on board. God sets this logic on its head. He who spoke the universe into existence with a word has little need for our strength. He looks for someone willing to be used, and He gives them the strength they need. In God’s economics, brokenness is the only currency of consequence.

So I am sitting across a table from a man that I respect greatly. In the midst of describing some far-off plans for missionary work, my whole ‘type A’ thing takes over. I distinctly recall making some Krushchev-esque gestures on the table. (Fortunately, I kept my shoes on.) As my awareness of my surroundings returned to me, I remember shrinking back into my chair, making a sheepish apology for getting a bit out of hand. You see, I have a tendency to forget myself. My voice, my manner, and even my stature is, well, big. This is not intentional, in fact, it is rarely even conscious. While on Praise Team, I would sing louder without a mic than the other two male vocalists on mics. I wasn’t trying to, I just sang until I could hear myself, and that happened to be really loud. I guess I never really saw myself as intimidating, and I have a hard time realizing that others could see me in that light. It is strange, really… it is only when you start to get a sense of yourself that you really gain a sense of the other. I have learned much recently about who I am, but I am only starting to learn about what that means to others. I am beginning to realize that my silence can be as meaningful as any words. I am trying to learn listening as a language. I’m not quite fluent yet.

My friend says something deeply true to me. I know something about strength, or at least the appearance of strength. But I am only recently learning brokenness. He says that God does not need my strength, but He will use my vulnerability. He is right. ‘A broken heart and a contrite spirit,’ I think it goes. It is not strength but brokenness that makes a man great by God’s accounting. And He has finally found a way to break me.

I think of Darius. A man destined to be used to do great things. In a way, great deeds were just part of being Darius, as much as his hair color or his taste in figs. Just by being who he was, he had the gifts required to play his role. To steal C.S.L’s phrase, he was sixpence none the richer for them. So the real question is not one of capabilities, but of pliability. God was going to use him one way or another. Really, He uses everybody one way or another. Darius had the choice that we all have: he could choose to be part of the blessings God would work through him, or he could cut himself off from those blessings.

‘A woman who will set a people free.’ I believed it when I said it. I believe it still. God will use her in great ways, of that I have little doubt. But it is not so simple, I think. A ministry here was a legacy of hers, yet I wonder how many blessings she received as she blessed others. I wonder if she ever was free to receive them, or whether she was still trying to prove something. It is not mine to know; it is between her and God. I will still pray that she finds her true strength. I will pray that she finds brokenness.

I am not so different, perhaps. ’He will do great things,’ or that’s the rumor at least. That never was the question, really. I thought that it was for far too long. I had worried so much about things going the way they were supposed to, about doing all the things expected of me. ‘To whom much is given’ and all that. I worried so much about being in the right place that I forgot with Whom I was there. Mary and Martha again. I am sure that He will use me for His will; He uses all of us for His will. Will I be blessed as I am used? The only way that I will find His blessings is in brokenness. Valor and courage are forms of strength, certainly, but perhaps it takes a deeper strength to remain vulnerable. It certainly is scarier.

It all comes back to a question of authorship. We can try to write our own stories, but He will weave our vignettes back into His Great Story. We will not change the endings of that story, but we will cut ourselves off from His blessings. He asks us to yield ourselves to Him, so that He can lead us as characters in His story. He asks us to stop wrestling Him for the pen. Yet again, we must lose our lives to find them. Letting go of the pen, we dive fully into the story. Yielding to His story, and we find yourself in the midst of a story worth living. After all, He is a better Author than any of us.

‘These are my people.’ It is a fascinating phrase, if you really think about it. Who are my people? Where do they start? Where do they stop? What does one do to become of ‘my people?’ When is one expelled from ‘my people?’ Is it genetic code? We all share Adam and Noah. There is no magic chunk of adenine and cytosine that tells us who ‘our people’ are. Is it skin color? Each society decides color differently. Consider blackness in Brazil vice America. Is it customs? Customs change. National origins? They change as well. Perhaps it is some construct where the past that never was is projected on our present as a way to explain the realities of cultural competition. But perhaps we over-complicate the simple. ‘Our people’ are the people around whom we are free to be ourselves. Around ‘our people,’ we can exhale and kick off our shoes. ‘Our people’ is just another way of saying ‘home.’

With the Kennedy School’s hypersensitivity on race, it is amazing that it took me so long to figure out what my race actually was. Perhaps not so amazing after all. I was told that I needed to define myself by some pre-fabricated identity; that I needed to check a box on some form I had never seen that would tell me who I was and why. It never seemed to fit. I never felt at home with the Bridgers and the Elisabeths. And I certainly could not imagine myself in a smoking jacket. The Ford Taurus-equipped white picket fenced home in the suburbs didn’t match either. Nor NASCAR or pick-up trucks. Always the square peg being hammered into the round hole. And then, it finally occurred to me. Race was never handed down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai. It is just another way of saying ‘the people that you feel a part of.’

My people, I suppose, are soldiers, sailors and airmen. When two military people meet each other, they almost instantly have a rapport. Not just professional commonalities, but true sense of identity. A sense that we are something, and we are different from the out-group other. The sense that ethnicity provides for most people. It can even trump the traditional mechanics of identity, for two military people of different races will often get along better than either with a civilian of the same race. Inter-service rivalry disappears when an unknown civilian enters the mix, in the same exact way that a Cubano and a Dominicano both instantly become Latinos when an Anglo stranger enters the conversation. Military people, regardless of age, race or gender, always banded together in the context of the Kennedy School. There was one point where someone referred to the recent USAFA graduates as ‘the phalanx.‘ But it is not just the in-group/out-group function that tells me that my people are those I serve with. It is the sense of comfort, of ‘knowing the rules,’ yet being able to be myself within those rules that defines me as a member of this group ‘military.’ I know one of my people, and they know me, and we all know the rules. We fight together, live together, and place our lives in each others‘ hands. It is an artificial ethnicity, no doubt, one that inducts spouses, and one that recruits converts. But even when someone leaves the service, the service usually stays with them. Once a Marine, or so the saying goes. So we are a people.

As a people, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. I remember one class at the Kennedy School, where one of my friends, attempting to compliment me, said ‘I like Dave… he’s not like a normal military guy.’ While I received the statement in the spirit it was sent, something in me rose up against it. In order to accept that compliment, I would have to divorce myself from the group that I identified with. Such a statement would have been completely unacceptable if we were to replace [military guy] with [any other race, ethnicity, or people group]. And then I understood my umbrage: this guy was insulting my people. I remember Marva Dawn’s talk, where she called the military ‘the powers and the principalities.’ The insult wasn’t personal, but against my people. For all the talk of cross-cultural ministry, my culture was not welcome. I was of my people group, and an attack on them was an attack on me.

The military is ‘my people.’ And I take offense when someone insults my people. I see it almost as a sort of racism. But I never followed the equation to its logical conclusion. I never bothered to remove the plank from my own eye. I finally saw it in the midst of all the talk of cross-cultural ministry at Urbana. If my group was basically an artificial ethnicity, and others were then capable of racism against my people, then my people were capable of racism against others. Funny how I conveniently never followed the math all the way through.

Perhaps I knew where it would lead. Every group has a negative impression of the out-group, on some level. Every group is proud. And mine is no different. There is always some flavor of ‘this close and no closer,’ some way of telling the other that ‘you are not the same as we are.’ We call the other ’civilian.’ We do not always get along with ’civilians.’ Quite often, they don’t really understand us. Sometimes, they mock us. And sometimes, I didn’t understand them back. I didn’t really try to find the honor or the nobility in the accountant going to work each day to provide for his family. Sometimes, I even mocked them back. ’Spoiled Harvard rich kids, if they lived in Stalin’s Russia for a week or so they would change their tune.’ I was no better than Marva Dawn, no better than the child of privilege who mocks those whose sacrifice safeguards his freedom. May God forgive me of my strange racism. May I learn to see people as they are, as He sees them. Not as ‘civilians.’

It is good to be proud of one’s people. I am proud of mine. I am honored to serve here, and I am honored to serve with such men and women. I am truly in the midst of heroes and I refuse to denigrate that. We are a brave people, a noble people, a people who serve others. But my love for my people should never become disdain for other peoples. May I find love and understanding for other peoples as well. I will grant the patience to their groups that I ask for mine. I will bother to try to understand before I decide who they are and why. After all, I owe civilians a tremendous debt. They pay for my people, and they are our raison d‘etre. It’s kind of difficult to have guardians without having people to be guarded.

Sometimes, it feels like God is calling us to live on the edge of a cliff. To live in that place where if you take a step forward through your own strength, you fall to your death, but if you take a step back to secure your footing, you will slip farther and faster down the slope. In that place, all you can hold onto is Him, yet in that place, the enemy will do all he can to make you let go of Him and trust your own strength. He stokes the fires of our fears, weaving nightmares; he goads us into taking measures to keep ourselves safe.

Lying on an air mattress on a hotel room floor, Urbana night number two, he attacks full force. A perfectly vicious nightmare thought, one that speaks to all my deep fears, one that swears to me that God will betray me if I trust Him. It is the last night of the conference, right before communion, and some guy that is everything I find objectionable proposes to her from the main stage. She runs up there, with tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, saying ‘yes’ over and over. Everyone is ecstatic, rejoicing for the just-engaged couple. And my dreams all die, shattered before twenty thousand people, with no one I can turn to in the whole crowd who would understand why I wasn’t happy for them. In this place of God’s promise, He would prove to me in the clearest of terms that His promises only apply to others. It is a perfectly poisoned blade, laced with betrayal, vulnerability, illegitimacy, cruelty, aimed precisely for my deepest desires.

‘Grab’ and ‘Run’ can be the same thing. Either way, they are reacting to the fear. ‘Rebuke’ is the right answer. I am not defined by my fears. I am defined by God. So I rebuke the nightmare, and it comes back, and I rebuke it again, and I repeat in my head, over and over, like a praise song without words, ‘I know the plans I have for you.’ God is trustworthy. He loves me. Perfect love drives out fear. And I finally get to sleep, cradling my Bible like a child, holding onto it like a life raft in a storm.

Waking up the next day, I acknowledge my fears to Him. I know ‘Run’ and ‘Grab’ are both wrong. But I think ‘Stall’ is also wrong. But moving terrifies me still. I am back in my car, driving home from Pensacola. I am not sure what to do, but I as if I am supposed to do something. My fears paralyze me. I ask Him to make sense of this. He does, by way of a brother in Christ.

Accusations are like fears. Especially when they are spiked with threats. I was called a loser once, and threatened with ostracism. She was called ‘not of her own people’ once, and also threatened with ostracism. So both she and I ran the other direction, succeeding and doing and acting with all our might to disprove the accusation. We reacted to the accusation, and we gave them power. Like an addiction, the only way to silence the whispers was to succeed. When you stopped running, they came back even louder than before. Until I rebuked them. Until I quit asking my fears who I was, and started asking God.

She accused me, implicitly but unmistakably, of stalking her. She laced her accusation with the clearly implied threat that any future attempts at communication would be met with absolute hatred from her and from our mutual friends. My response to the pain of her accusation was to run to the complete opposite extreme, not mentioning her to mutual friends who could have provided wise council, intentionally avoiding finding out anything about her at all, not doing anything where anyone could possibly whisper that there was any shade of correctness in her accusation. Perhaps initially this was a positive response to one whose tendency is to control. Over time, though, I believe this became a stronghold. A mix of pride and fear kept me frozen: pride that I could disprove her accusation through my absolute inaction, fear that any action would be met instantly with the death of my heart.

There were normal, sane, right actions that I could have done. Actions that wouldn’t have been considered by any real standard in keeping with her accusation, actions I felt called to. The very whisper of the accusation stayed my hand. Perhaps this is what it was designed to do. But that design was never of God: He does not play upon our fears. I know the whisper of conscience, and it feels completely different from the whisper of fear. My ‘disprove at all costs’ response has long since become pride. I wanted to be judged as right by everyone except for God. What I called ‘being honorable’ was really ‘being sure that everyone would side with me against her in the event of a future accusation.’ Instead of proving who I was to the world, I should have asked God to tell me who I am.

I was in accountability when she accused me. I am in accountability now. I seemed to forget, though, that I am not accountable to her for my actions, for we are out of real relationship. I am certainly not accountable to the whisper of her accusation that lingered. So I reject the accusation. I am not the person she said I was, not now, and not then. I do not need to prove her wrong. And I do not consider her an off-limits topic with mutual friends here. And I do not deny that I would like to see her here. And I will not preclude all future communication. None of these are wrong things to do. I will act with honor, accountability, and submission to God, but I no longer need to disprove her. My desire is reconciliation. Her last expressed desire was enmity. I will pursue my desire, even if that puts me at odds with her desire. I pray that God would continue to direct me.

It seems now that her accusation was laced with both an anti-coagulant and a neuro-toxin. A wound that is de-legitimized cannot be healed, because there is no way to put a voice to the pain. Two months ago, God neutralized that poison, telling me that it was okay to be hurt by the things she said and did. It seemed the neuro-toxin remained, paralyzing me. As long as I needed to disprove her, I was cut off from all action in anything that even tangentially involved her. God has unmade this poison, telling me who I am, telling me that I am not the monster that she called me. My hands are no longer stayed. May they be His hands. May they do His will in this story.

'Rain is a bad reminder of everything I don't wanna know
Rain is a backseat driver that takes me where I don't wanna go
And it looks like the sky is caving in again
I'm dry and cracked, the sky goes black
And tut, tut, it looks like rain

Erosion
Oh, Spirit fall like rain on my thirsty soul
Erosion
Oh, sweet erosion, break me and make me whole

The thirstiest grounds can't take the rain
My undecided vices washing on down the drain
And it looks like the sky is caving in again
My heart is cracked, the sky goes black
And tut, tut, it looks like rain

Oh, Erosion, would You wash away my sins
Oh, Erosion, I need a second shot again
Oh, Erosion, would You break my heart again
Oh, Erosion, I am a broken hearted man.'

- Switchfoot, Erosion.

It is strange, I think, how seeing one little thing can take an experience and turn it into something quite different. Little of the facts may be changed, but a memory or a picture can turn one situation into something else entirely. Something so small can entirely change the character of something much larger.

I arrive at Urbana. Nothing too controversial, I plan to meet up with a bunch of old and new friends, and run my crazy new missionary idea by a few missions organizations. Standard church retreat, rehack my God currencies, get fired up for Him, ring in the New Year with Communion. A good plan, nothing too controversial, a plan where I could keep everything safe and under control. The plan lasts about four hours.

Paging through the welcome materials, I run smack into a picture of C. right above a description of one of her ministries represented at the conference. I had been operating under the assumption that she would not be here. That assumption, along with any assurances of stability that had come with it, was shattered in an instant. And I was transported, in a moment, to a place in between, a place where all the simple answers didn’t work. Any semblance of systemic control was gone.

As hard as it is to be in this place, I am real here. I am not totally sure I can explain why or how, but I know it to be true. I sand loud during praise, sang with all my heart. I am here with Him, terrified but resolute somehow. The message spoke to me, but it spoke about this story. Three times, three different messages all spoke to me about the story from three different angles. I heard Him in them, over and over. At first I didn’t want to. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between cajoling and inviting. Perhaps that difference is trust. But I am back in this place. Three years ago, six months ago, it would have been unthinkable. But I was a much different person then, I think. And as I change, this place changes. Not because it is different, but because I am different. What sounded once like a mockery sounds now like a promise. Like in C.S.L.’s ‘That Hideous Strength,’ what once looked like dwarves tearing my pristine world asunder now look like angels re-ordering my life into something more beautiful. I can’t say I totally understand this place. Nor why I am here. But He changes me here; I become more like Him here. I suppose that is enough of an answer.

It is as if His story here is inescapable. This what He wants me to hear, but it is the thing I least want to hear, because it is so scary. I want to ask for some sort of ending, some sort of resolution, but I know that endings are not my deepest desires. And I know that He wants my deepest desires. Not the safe offerings, the cheap investments small enough to control, safe enough that I will not shatter if I hope and fail. He wants the deepest desires, the ones that live in the depths of my heart and invite me to dive in. So I am honest with my deepest desire in this story, I do not run from it. I want her as my wife. And I am here. To whatever end.

A broken heart and a contrite spirit. This is what God wants. A man of God tells me this, and I thank him for it. Brokenness is what God wants, and this is the way He has found to get it from me. So be it. But this is not an academic exercise. I claim the verse about the persistent widow. Twice against my will and one time willingly, God has brought me back to this story. If this is His story, then I will wait upon Him to write an ending.

Abram and Sarah kept hoping. They did not hope in some theoretical, maybe-it-will-happen, passive sense. Their role in hoping was very active and very intentional: they kept trying to bear a child. At some point it must have seemed a mockery. At some point, Abram and Sarah must have shared tears in their wedding bed, hoping against hope to produce a child. But they hoped still, and they believed that if God said it would be so, then it would be so. They acted on that hope until it came to pass.

I do not have a license to sit back. But I pray with all my heart for His guidance, that He would be very directive so that I would do His will and not my own. At the same time, I pray for the courage to do the things He asks. I am absolutely terrified. I am back in that place on the ride home from Pensacola. I pray that God would come meet a weak man where he is at. Oh God, I believe, please help me believe.

I’ve heard a story about a man who goes to slay a dragon to find a princess, yet ends up finding himself. It is an interesting story, but I’ve never really thought about what happens after that man goes home. Samwise ends up with Rosie Cotton, but really, she was the only girl he really liked. Eowyn finds herself much happier with Faramir, but she kills the Nazgul for her father, not for Aragorn. So our dragon-slayer returns home and finds himself a nice country girl from the village. But who wants to be that girl, especially in the knowledge of the lengths he went through to fight for another? If he has poured our the depths of his heart for a woman in such a story, does not his wife have the right to expect even more from him?

So in pursuing this story, I suppose I am setting the bar pretty high. I know there are other endings to this story. I know the one I desire, and I will continue to ask for that ending as long as He gives me the strength to do so. I guess I never thought about the consequences of this story on any future stories. A friend of mine brought this consideration up. As a dumb guy, it would have escaped me, so I thank her for that. I viewed this story as training to love my future wife, whether by some miracle she is C. or whether she is not. And I believe that is true, that my wife will get a better husband out of this story. But the story adds complications that I had not considered.

I have learned to love more than I ever knew how. Does not my wife have the right to all of that love? There is something in this story that draws love out of me, and drives me to God for more love. I believe with all my heart that He calls me here. It is only He that teaches me to love this way, and under these circumstances. Totally bereft of any reasonable hope, I remember that early in this story, I asked Him to teach me to love C. the way that He does. He has answered that prayer more than I thought possible. I pray simpler prayers for her than I ever have before, beautiful prayers that she would be blessed and kept safe, that He would tell her who she is, that she would fall more and more in love with Him. If I can love this way under these circumstances, then I desire to love my wife all the more under better circumstances. My heart is fully engaged and fully His. This is not a story where I find the depths of my heart, but it is not one I can manufacture.

When I knew I knew. This is the second time. I remember the first time. I was twenty years old. I saw her and I knew. Well, really, the second time I saw her I knew. The first time I met her I made a fool of myself (which might mean that I made a fool of myself the second and subsequent times, which is another question entirely. Hey, I‘m a guy.) But I remember, clear as day, sitting in an Ukrainian church, looking at this brown haired, tall, beautiful girl, I knew. I knew how it would play out. I saw the day before I left, telling her how I felt about her, I saw that day on that Sunday three months before it happened. I knew it was only for then, not for forever. But I knew. I loved to think about her, my toes curled when I thought about her, she was absolutely beautiful to me. That year, my eyes were blinded to every other girl (and if you’ve ever been to Ukraine, you know how significant that is.) We spent most evenings together. I still remember watching the sun go down from on top of a hill, sitting next to her on a broken wall. The joy of finding a new restaurant or hillside or sunset was in having something new to share with her. I knew that I was in love. But I also knew it had to end, and I knew when it had to end. It ended there, but I was richer for it, richer for knowing her. I thank her for those times, and I thank her for her friendship. In the time that God gave us, He calibrated my understanding of love. He set my bar high. I knew what it felt like to be in love, and I would wait for Him to provide it again.

The second story is harder. And different. Not that the first story did not have its twists and turns. Not that we did not manage to hurt each other. But there was always a mourning to that hurt, not a rage. Not accusations. Still, I felt it with C. Stronger than before. But I never saw how it would play out. I never had a finish line. I cannot explain this. I wanted to find an ending, some blessing that would say ‘lesson complete’ and release me. No endings of my own manufacture worked. As unyielding as Sheol, the verse goes. So I yield to whatever ending the Author of all things will write, and I yield to Him my heart. I will no longer bury it. No matter the cost. Still, I pray that I will feel what I feel but all the more for my future wife. Which means that I will wait on God, for I cannot manufacture these feelings.

So the bar is set high. So be it. I will gladly slay dragons for my wife, now that I know how. Even better, perhaps we will slay dragons together. And if this is not His story, then I believe He has a better story, even more amazing than this one. (Better is not the same as happier, though. The best story was excruciatingly painful.) I still believe this is His story, though. I will fight accordingly.

Sun Tzu teaches that the direct approach is not always the most effective approach. Sometimes, we need to take a step back to see the difference between the things that we want to do and how we want to do them. Sometimes, means and ends are mutually exclusive, and in those times we must decide whether it is more important to do the things we are doing or to do the thing we set out to do. Doing the things we are currently doing generally is easier. But easier has little to do with more effective.

We are told to go into all the world and make disciples of men. There are no asterisks or parentheses in that command. It is not go into all the world (in ways in which you are comfortable) and make disciples of men (the way you want to, only working with people you completely understand.) The Great Commission was given to the body of Christ as a whole, not to one nation or one denomination. So we should accomplish it as one. And here we find another little irony that God built into this world: when we act as one, we generally take on a multitude of roles. When we all try to do one role, we never end up acting as one. When the body of Christ decides to be the body, the hands become more hand-like, because they don’t have to be the stomach, and vice versa. If the members of the body all want to do one specific function, rather than serve one goal together, the body splinters. If all the organs want to be hand-like, there is no need for any organ to depend on the hands. It is the same with an army. In an effective military, each unit figures out what they have to offer the whole, and they devote their time and energy to that thing. Our marching order is the Great Commission. So let us figure out what we have to offer to the mission of the body.

A friend of mine just came back from a short-term mission bubbling over with passion from her trip. And good on her for that, I do want to honor her willingness to go. But as a veteran of several short-term missions trips (and one medium-term one,) I wonder how much we allow our God-given zeal to cloud our God-given wisdom. As she tells the group about all the great things God did in her life while she was there, I find myself asking a question: In the course of the mission, how many others were reached? I ask the same of myself, thinking about my trips. Certainly, I came back fired up. But did I reach anyone? If I went to Urbana, or to Summit, I would come back fired up. But I would hardly be a missionary. Raising this thought, my critique was answered with ‘it says go, so we should go (however we see fit.)’ I am trying to think of another profession where the mere desire to succeed combined with any attempt at all is automatically considered a success. So hearing several different flavors of ‘short-term missions are important because of what they do for the people that go on them,’ I start to wonder if we have lost the why in the how. Andrew did not go to India to recharge his spiritual batteries. He went to spread the Gospel. Paul was not planning on going to Spain so that he could come back to Israel more energized. He went to reach people with the Good News. If we are not effectively doing likewise, we need to question what we are doing. If our why is unchanged, we need to rethink our how.

One-eighty off is rarely the right answer. As previously mentioned, I’ve been reading several of K.P. Yohannan’s books. I find his critique of current models of missions challenging and in many ways accurate. I don’t happen to agree with all of his solution, though. There is a strong overtone of ‘give us money and stay out of our way.’ North American Christians are tremendously blessed in terms of resources, no doubt. And we will held to account for our use of those resources, no doubt. But nowhere in the Scriptures, nor in the early church, is there any idea of ‘your group can’t play.’ In an army, even the quartermasters have something to bring to the fight. The typist from Black Hawk Down comes to mind. While typing was a useful skill, that Ranger proved himself pretty capable with an M4 Carbine, as well. Surely, it is not a healthy army where the quartermasters hoard all the weapons, using them only on brief forays to the front lines. But neither is it a healthy army where the logisticians are stripped of their sidearm and forever banned from the battlefield. Besides, you never know when you will need an air traffic controller or a paramedic to strap on a parachute and jump into the fight. So Brother K.P., though I hold him in high regard, is not all the way right, either.

There are, of course, worse discussion that we could be having. Most of the patronizing colonial missions nonsense is slipping away, and for the better. Similarly, Vinoth Ramachandra’s demands for self-flagellation and ‘America is the devil’ nonsense are not taken seriously, and rightly so, by most real missions organizations. So we are moving in the right direction, I think. Instead of spending all our time calling each other wrong, we’ve started to ask God what is right. This post is my attempt to do likewise.

Brother K.P. often repeats the argument that Americans simply do not understand the cultures of those who they are trying to reach, certainly not to the degree that an indigenous missionary would. By in large, this argument holds up. I saw missionaries who wanted to do everything po-Amerikanskiy, and I saw how ineffective they were. But I also saw American missionaries that understood the local culture better than the local Christians did. You see, Americans are not the only ones that associate certain sub-cultural traits with their faith. There are places where being Christian is associated with a certain ethnicity or class. In those places, an outsider’s presence may help the local body of Christ consider questions of relevance to their own culture. I think of Ukraine. I greatly respect the Christians of the Former Soviet Union, for they have endured more persecution than most of us could imagine. One of the results of persecution is a complete unwillingness to compromise. This trait serves one well when bring interrogated by the Soviet security services. It does not, however, help one to adapt when one’s own culture undergoes rapid change. So the Ukrainian Baptists were left irrelevant to their own culture. They could only attract Babushkas, because all the kids were too busy going to dance clubs. The inflexible air of the Baptists ended up scaring off all the young people, who were likely to be lectured on proper footwear or the authorized number of earrings in church. Mick Stockwell was the Southern Baptist Missionary to Khar’kov. A football player from Texas, he had an amazing understanding of the Ukrainian culture. He spoke Russian exceedingly well, understood the culture very well, and was even able to navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the local government. Working closely with young leaders of the local churches, he managed to very effectively shape the churches toward relevancy with their own culture, while still respecting the church leaders from the older generation. I do not think that simply giving the Ukrainian Baptists money would have done nearly as much good as Mick did in reaching the area for Christ.

So we are all different. We all have different things we can bring to the fight. But ultimately, it is the same fight. So we are an army. The most effective armies use combined arms tactics, using their similarities to mass power and capitalize on their strength, while using their differences to exploit the weaknesses of their adversary. Through complimentary units, such an army is able to fight in many different types of environment, even at one time. So then, as American Christians, there are three things we must consider in finding our role: our differences, our similarities, and our specific corner of the fight.

We have different skills. We come from a country largely free of persecution, so we have time to study in peace. We have access to a tremendous amount of Christian training and resources. We also have access to a tremendous amount of physical resources. But we should not stop there. The American church has more to offer than just ‘stuff.’ American society is strongly rules-driven, with a strong sense of fair play, yet still quite informal and flexible. Change is almost constant in American culture. Hence, Americans are tremendously resourceful at building organizational structures, and generally can accomplish a lot through those structures. While operating in realms comfortable to us, we can accomplish a tremendous amount of goals per unit time. Of course, along with this comes a tremendous frustration with relationship-driven societies or cultures which cannot meet our demands for instant gratification. Hence, Americans are good at ‘kicking in the door,’ but are not so useful in the long haul. In summary, we have a lot of resources, and we are masters of organizational construction and optimization, but we have a hard time stepping outside ourselves.

We do have more similarities than we realize. Brother K.P., in his study of successful churches in China and Korea, overlooks the tremendous role that Chinese and Korean- American communities played in those revivals. In the instability following the Korean war, many Koreans made their way to America. Just as with the Irish and the Italians, religion provided a touchstone of stability with their own culture during the transition. That religion happened to be Evangelical Christianity. Now imagine you’re a Korean-American church, and many of your members understand Korean culture and speak Hangol. Where do you think you might send missionaries? Similarly, although to a lesser degree, the Chinese-American community has provided some amazing missionaries to Taiwan, and most likely to the mainland as well. Due to immigration, America has a tremendous capacity for home-grown indigenous missionaries to most countries. Similar to missions strategies targeting international students studying abroad in America, in reaching our own culture, we can reach more cultures than we realize around the world. But we must learn how to cross those boundaries here in order to have effects abroad. Therefore, cross-cultural missions in America may be a very effective avenue for Americans to reach the world. This combines the advantages of tent-maker missions (as we already have jobs here,) with relationship evangelism (as we already live here, and will be here for more than a week.)

Our fight is a unique one. And a costly one. It takes a tremendous amount of money to run a church in the United States. Surely, we could do with a bit less expensive carpet when there are starving Christians. But we avoid the work when we cite church building projects as the root of all evil. On a practical level, my church in Corpus Christ had eight services, and all of them were packed. They had outgrown their building two years beforehand, and legitimately needed a new building. Even then, they would still have three services. On a more theoretical level, artisans built beautiful cathedrals in Europe to celebrate the presence of God. The Israelites spent a tremendous amount on their temple. It was Judas, not Christ, who critiqued a woman for pouring expensive perfume on the feet of her Lord. On a strategic level, it is entirely possible that the money it took to have one church in Rome could have funded five churches in Ephesus. But God’s plan for Rome was not His plan for Ephesus. With the money it takes to fund one missionary with Christian Embassy, we could support one hundred native missionaries. But none of them could reach the people the Christian Embassy missionary could reach. Some fights simply take more resources. It takes at least $100,000 to shoot down an enemy aircraft. It takes a $0.50 bullet to neutralize an enemy soldier. It does not follow that an aircraft is worth 200,000 soldiers. Nor does it follow that we should no longer buy air-to-air missiles, because one missile could buy 200,000 bullets. There are simply different fights. The fights are interconnected, but not interchangeable. And some cost more to fight than others.

So how do we connect all of these things? There are groups within an army which devote themselves to the training and equipping of indigenous forces. Equipping includes money, but doesn’t stop there. Training involves the provision of sanctuary. You need somewhere removed from the front-lines if you are to train someone to be sent back out. Perhaps this is our role. This as specific as I will be about this on the open Internet. If you want more information, please email me.

We are tasked to go into all the world. We are generally most effective where we are already placed, for we have a lot of things built in. Hence, the advantages of indigenous missionaries. Yet, our most effective learning comes from those who challenge our paradigms. So indigenous missionaries cannot be our be all, end all. As the body of Christ, we must be able to do both. As American Christians, we must find our role in this mission. We may find ourselves as liaisons, as combatants, or as logisticians. Liaisons take lessons and resources and apply them where they are most needed. Logisticians make sure the right things get to the right places. Combatants pick up their swords and fight where they are placed. All of these are fights, and we need to engage all of them.

I read something once about the economics of a battlefield. Perhaps this is the beginning.

Sunshine, won't you be my mother
Sunshine, come and help me sing
My heart is darker than these oceans
My heart is frozen underneath

We are crooked souls trying to stay up straight,
Dry eyes in the pouring rain well
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast till the break of daylight where
The shadow proves the sunshine

Oh Lord, why did you forsake me?
Oh Lord, don't be far away away
Storm clouds gathering beside me
Please Lord, don't look the other way

Crooked souls trying to stay up straight
Dry eyes in the pouring rain well
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast to the break of day light where
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Crooked souls trying to stay up straight
Dry eyes in the pouring rain well
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Two scared little runaways
Hold fast to the break of day light where
The shadow proves the sunshine
The shadow proves the sunshine

Shine on me,
Let my shadows prove the sunshine.

- The Shadow Proves the Sunlight, Switchfoot.


Oh, my soul, sometimes we don't know what to do
We work so hard being tough on our own
But now it's me and you
Let's get up sad bones
'Cause we are fall on hard times
But you don't have to stand up all alone
Just put your hand in mine

Climb on a back that's strong
Yeah, you can get what you want
Climb on a back that's strong

If you could save me a place in heaven
With a clean well-lighted room
I'd muscle up to Armageddon
And wave to you darling, be home soon
If you could show me the story of love
I would write it again and again
And then you could be the woman you need
If you would just let me be the man that I am

Oh, I don't know
Sometimes we try to hard to see
But we've got one down and one more to go
That's when you say to me

Climb on a back that's strong
Yeah, you can get what you want
Climb on a back that's strong

- Climb On (A Back That's Strong), Caedmon's Call


I picture you in the sun, wondering what went wrong..
and falling down on your knees, asking for sympathy
and being caught in between all you wish for and all you’ve seen
and trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in.

May God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.

I know I would apologize if I could see your eyes,
‘cause when you showed me myself, you know, I became someone else.
But I was caught in between all you wish for and all you need.
I picture you fast asleep, a nightmare comes, you can’t keep awake.

May God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.

‘Cause if I find.. if I find my own way, how much will I find?
If I find, if I find my own way, how much will I find?
If I find, if I find my own way, how much will I find..
you….
I’ll find you….. you…

Oh I don’t know anymore what it’s for.. I’m not even sure if there is anyone who is in the sun—will you help me to understand?
‘Cause I’ve been caught in between all I wish for and all I need.
Oh maybe you’re not even sure what it’s for, any more than me.

May God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.. always.. may God’s love be with you.

- In The Sun, Joseph Arthur

Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption
Winding in and winding out
The shine of it has caught my eye

And roped me in
So, mesmerizing and so hypnotizing,
I am captivated, I am

Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong
I am right
I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

So clear
Like the diamond in your ring
Cut to mirror your intention
Oversized and overwhelmed
The shine of which has caught my eye
And rendered me
So isolated, so motivated
I am certain now that I am

Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong
I am right
I swear I'm right
Swear I knew it all along
And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

So turn
up the corners of your lips
Bite them and feel my finger tips
Trace the moment for forever

Defenses paper thin
Just one touch and I'll be in
Too deep now to ever swim against the current
So let me slip away
So let me slip against the current
So let me slip away

Like hope
dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption...
Vindicated - Dashboard Confessional.


prostrate kneeling on the floor
skin and bone against a board
nervouc brow and sweaty fingers
dimpled chin against a fist
if this is faith, this is it
off the lips and hope to linger

whatever i ask for You say You'll give
on all of this my hope is pinned
i offer it all though i can't see
and all of this, all of this return to me

"need to scream" You whisper
hope to shout, there's no words
i pray the Spirit gets it right
with all this intercession
i pray that my confession
don't blind Your will to mine

whatever i ask for You say You'll give
on all of this my hope is pinned
i offer it all though i can't see
and all of this, all of this return to me

scream to count the hours that i have wasted by talking to myself
but a thousand years to You is but a day
that's why i...

whatever i ask for You say You'll give
on all of this my hope is pinned
i offer it all though i can't see
and all of this, all of this return to me

- Return to Me, Jennifer Knapp


Come back and haunt me
Follow me home
Give me a motive
Swallow me whole

They say I've lost it
What could I know
When I'm but a mockery
I'm so alone

Sooner or later you'll find out
There's a hole in the wall

Today is ours
Condemned to be free
Free to keep breathing
Free to believe

I look to find You
Down on my knees
Oh God, I believe!
Please help me believe

Sooner or later they'll find out
There's a hole in the wall
Sooner or later you'll find out
That you'll dream to be that small

I'm a believer, help me believe

I gave it all away and I lost who I am
I threw it all away
With everything to gain
And I'm taking the leap
With dreams of shrinking
Yeah, dreams of shrinking
- Sooner or Later (Soren's Song), Switchfoot.


You broke the silence
A break in the clouds
A ray of hope in the darkness
You dusted off the steeples
Places full of fear
Full of never-ending judgement

And what is love without much risk?
You were a man of great sorrow
The world that You created
Kept You at a distance
You weren't recognizable

Oh, You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
The impossible

You bridged the gap
You tore the veil
Almighty God in the flesh
All the plans and schemes
Against Your love would fail
In light of Your obedience

Yeah, You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
The impossible
The impossible
The impossible

A babe cries in the night
The earth shook in awe
They echo of a man's cries
The curse undone
The curse undone
Our hero has won

You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
The impossible

You're the hero
We've been waiting for
You have done the impossible
- Bethany Dillon, Hero (from the Narnia Soundtrack.)